Polar Bear Blues: A Memoir Of The Endless War (The Endless War. Book 1)

by Steve Wishnevsky

  After a while that feeling went away, the corpsman and a couple sailors carried Kerry off, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry, I assumed he was dead. I got to my feet. That was a project of itself. A few of the swabbies noticed me, one got the attention of a petty officer who came over. “CPO Link, sir, may I help you?”

  “My name is Kapusta. Photographer. I work for General Hodges in Dalny. The Recon Office. I guess I need to get back there as soon as I can. Did my pilot…”

  “He died. Sir. He must have died just as he crashed.” He looked me over as if he doubted my credentials. “Do you want to follow me?”

  “Is Admiral Epstein on board?”

  “I’m… He is a busy man.” He didn’t call me sir.

  “You send somebody to tell him that Miles Kapusta is here. See what he says. I also need something to eat, and a comfortable chair. That was a hard landing. I am less young than I have been. And by the way, my rank is army captain. I didn’t wear my uniform in case we were captured, crashed behind enemy lines. I’m sure you understand.”

  He was sure he didn’t understand, but he was not going to take any chances. I was obviously outside his system, so he had best play it safe. “Yes sir, of course, sir. There is an officer’s mess right this way.”

  “Not on the ship?”

  “The Takasago is stripped sir. We were all eating canned rations for four days. It was supposed to be five, but the Admiral brooks no delay.”

  “Yeah, I know. Lead on, Link.”

  >>>>>>>

  The mess was another army tent, but staffed with white uniformed Filipinos. They didn’t care who I was, just what did I want? “Coffee with a shot of rum, some toast or bread of some kind. Please? Butter?”

  “Yes, sir. Would you like a muffin? Blueberry, fresh out of the oven.”

  “Several muffins. And butter.” All of a sudden, I was starved. They must have understood my hunger, they brought me a half dozen muffins, they smelled better than a my chance of redemption. I was down to the next to the last one, when Eppi showed up.

  “Having an adventure?”

  “Adventures are for young skinny people with no brains. I am just trying to do a job.”

  “Aren’t we all?” He cornered the last muffin, beckoned to the waiter. “You want to go back to Dalny with me? I have to get back to my salvage job.”

  “Walk, swim, or bicycle?”

  “Airplane actually. We have to wait a day, there is still a certain amount of lead in the air.”

  “Yeah, I can hear.” Sounded like small arms fire, but that was enough. I had been shot down enough for one day. “So, it’s going well?”

  “A little better than the plan. Once we grounded the Takasago, ran fifty tanks and a thousand men on shore, the Reds were shattered. The problem is that there are no straight lines in this city, roads were laid out on cow-paths, and the place is riddled with fortifications, trenches, and blockhouses from all the Japanese wars. A slogging fest.”

  “Been there. Done that. It sucked.”

  “I bet. Ground warfare is no joke.” Damn sailor boy. I still had my camera, he ordered up a courier to get the film back to Dalny. We had ham and eggs, then he had to get back to his job. On the way out, he assigned a J.G. to keep me out of trouble, not a problem. He found me a hammock under a tarp in a grove, and I fell out. Once I stopped shaking, I went to sleep, just as pretty as you please.

  >>>>>>>

  My first thought on awakening was that I was doing a piss poor job of writing a history, the way I kept bouncing around job to job, but as a memoir, it might be passable. Happy thoughts. Now if I could get a publisher, get it past the IB censors, get back to the States to sign the contracts, a few other minor details. Oh, and not get shot by the Reds, the Krauts, the Brits, the Warlords, the Nationalists, the IB and a few dozen people I had not even heard of yet… Authors are assholes.

  Grabbed some breakfast, found that they had dragged my plane off the mess tent, and made some attempt to create an airfield. The tent was re-erected, lines of sailors and soldiers lined up for chow. Only a few holes in the roof.

  A couple of swabbies with mops and buckets of whitewash were painting “USAAS Vlad” and an arrow on the field. Our plane looked bereft, I had managed to rip off the landing gear in my survival frenzy. I climbed up and rescued our personal effects, went back to the Field Sickbay, found where the corpsmen had left Kerry’s dog tags and pocket contents, took all of those, and was headed to the Takasago to look for Eppi, when one of his aides found me. “Sir, Admiral Epstein’s complements, he is awaiting you at the Airfield.”

  As I headed back again, I heard the throb of radials, and saw the smoke from a smudge fire someone had lit to show wind direction. To my complete lack of surprise, I saw that the incoming plane was the “Spirit of New Haven”, and quickened my pace all the way up to a shamble.

  The Tri-motor had landed by the time I got there, the motors cut off, crews ran to emplace chocks, lean a ladder up against the doorway. I was the first there, she was the first out. We hugged with a complete lack of respect for any audience and military protocol, nobody said a word.

  “So you think you are a pilot now?” She teased, probably to hide her worry.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m after your job, for real.” I kissed her. She kissed me back. My back didn’t even hurt there for a minute. Maggie and a gunner were also on board. We all went and had breakfast, my second, while they gassed up the Tri-motor, and loaded Eppi’s shit.

  Then Eppi and I chatted about nothing while she ran her tests, did her walk-around. In less than an hour total, we were back in the air, headed for Harbin. Maggie had to shoot a few pictures, we ran the Circle Line, then passed right over the center of town. It was not burning too bad. “We faked them out,” Eppi said. “They all ran to defend Vladivostok, and we sucker-punched the Harbin garrison. The Line is open, even better, we did very little damage to the port of Vladivostok.”

  “So you don’t need Dalny? After all that work?”

  “Not at all. We need all the capacity we can get, Dalny is still the shortest way to the Trans-Siberian. And there is still the Southern Strategy.”

  “The Silk Road?”

  “You got it.”

  >>>>>>

  Back in Dalny, I had a backlog of my regular work to do, but Peaches and Hanson had kept the wheels rolling. Lupo was doing very well, he and Olga were cranking out the transcripts from the Spanish. A whole lot of the world speaks Spanish. She would never win a Pulitzer, but her writing was concise and legible. All good. The Germans had started executing Allied generals in Europe, especially USAAS officers, for war crimes, an obvious attempt to influence Patton, not realizing that he could give a shit about the Air Arm. His tanks kept rolling in to Dalny Harbor, and it was not hard to suppose that he would eventually show up to command the victorious forces, once they were, in fact, victorious. Which remained to be seen.

  Maeve and I did have a night of marital bliss, before she had to go roaring off to ferry a delegation out to Jiu-quan. Our first tanker trucks and troops had made it there, and a rapid buildup was expected. I walked her to the airfield, waved bye-bye, then had one of my rare ideas. Seeing as how I had survived two airplane crashes by pure dumb luck and the skill of my wife, it would obviously behoove me to learn to fly. Or at least to land. The word was that the landings were the hard part, the sweaty part. So…

  I asked around, found a Captain Bill Jenkins, the guy in charge of the local Flight School, and put my case to him. He agreed, and bowing to my superior if bullshit rank, scheduled me to an hour a day flight training. Starting immediately. “The Major and most of the staff are out at Xilin Gol, we are moving the school there where there is more room, but I can check you out for a few days.” He nodded, as if sharing a secret. “Things are starting to move.”

  Once again, my big mouth landed me in trouble. I had just enough time while finding a flight suit to fit my fat ass, and a helmet to squeeze over my fat head, to realize how stupid I was. I
should have thrown myself on the ground, kicking and screaming, “No! No! No!” but my pride got in the way. Nothing stupider than pride.

  Jenkins sat in the back seat himself, “You have flown before, just do what you did then,” he said in a calm and reassuring voice. I hate people like that.

  The prop was thrown, I waited until the gauges were all in the green, the revs were smooth, then pushed the throttle forward and bumped down the field. This part was easy. The tail came up, I pulled back on the stick and off we went. Jenkins had me go out over the bay, do a few simple banks and turns, get the feel of the stick, then he directed me to try a few touch and go landings. It was still mid-morning, traffic was nonexistent, we had the field to ourselves. That was sphincter-clenching time, but he talked me through a few, just letting the wheels kiss the ground, then opening the throttle and lifting off again. Cut a big circle, come back and try it again. Sometimes I was too high, scared of the ground, and once I hit hard enough to rattle my teeth in my skull. We tried one more after that, I did well enough, I suppose, no damage.

  “Okay, not bad. I’ll take the controls now.” He just had to do a few high speed Immelmann turns, and a couple of barrel rolls before dropping us to a very short landing right in front of HQ. He pulled up his goggles, had the nerve to smile broadly, before saying, “You will do. Good reflexes, and you have a good grasp of the dynamics of flight. But anybody insane enough to use a mess tent to brake his landing has to be a natural.”

  I didn’t tell him I had lucked out, why spoil his fun? “Thanks, I guess. Tomorrow?”

  “Same time. We will have you soloing in a week. Max.”

  “Miles.” He laughed at that. Fuck him. Not here to be a funny man. Perhaps I was a bit on edge.

  >>>>>>>

  Things were moving real fast, not that we could see it here. The eye of the storm and all that crap. A steady stream of trucks and tanks going west was all that was obvious. I suspected that all the materiel that had been in the pipeline to France was coming here, Patton and the Hoovers had to keep what was left of the economy cranking, and I had an idea that Japan was keeping the wheels greased with cash money. They had all of Asia to loot for gold, and it was well known that all the gold and silver in the world eventually migrated to China and especially India. We were getting some information about India and Burma, Burma had joined the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the new Republic of Ceylon was also a member. Both coasts of India were under Imperial control, and there was little word from the interior. We did notice units of Ghurka and Pathan troops entraining for the Line, and good cess to them all.

  About the time Maeve got back from Jiu-quan, we heard that the Battle for Irkutsk had turned into a trench warfare situation, with troops pushing fortification lines south, trying to outflank each other. But with most of our Air Service at Xilin Gol and Ulan Bator, there was damn little the Germans could do about that. A war of shovels. I got the cold sweats just thinking about it. Everybody has their pet nightmares.

  The war was taking shape, we were both at the ends of ridiculously long supply chains, ours was shorter from dock to front, half of theirs, and the Pacific was a Japanese and American lake. Call that a wash. We didn’t have the heavy bombers, the Gotha IXs and Xs, but we had perhaps an edge in Pursuits. No Zepps, and nobody missed them. They were sitting ducks for the Hawks and the new Japanese planes, the Mitsubishi 1MF10s. The Japs and the Germans could use the Zepps to impress the new colonies, that was about all they were good for any more.

  So, soldiers and spades. The terrain was quite rugged, all nine hundred miles south to Jiu-quan, so mountain top forts and road blocks in the valleys would keep the Germans from a right hook into the soft belly of the Line. Not many roads out there, and very few of them actually went anywhere. So far, so good. South of Jiu-quan were the Himalayas, so forget that shit. If we could get enough tanks and planes to Jiu-quan, we could hold them. That was all the Japanese needed us to do. Then they could exploit the heartland of China, the coal and the rice, build up their empire, and we just had to hope they did not find us surplus to requirements. However, we never would lose sight of the fact that our real enemy was Patton. He was the one that hated us. He was the one that sent us to die out here. Hard facts, better left unexpressed.

  >>>>>>>

  Somewhere in there, I soloed, got my wings, which should have been a big deal, but was just another chore to cross off the list. I didn’t want to be a pilot anyway, it was noisy, cold, and dangerous. I just wanted to learn to land. Land is good. It is hard to plunge to your death from the land.

  Outside of that, we celebrated our punctuated marriage, I learned to interpret aerial photographs, helped Juan and Cookie make maps from our photos, wrote daily intelligence reports, and watched the biggest battle in history slowly take shape. At a safe distance, one would hope. I flew occasional photographical missions with Hanson as photographer, he knew how to shoot a little. I made it my business to stick to milk runs, filling in blank spots on the map, evaluating bridges, estimating the size of towns out in the ass end of nowhere, tracing possible routes for troops. Worthwhile work, but not setting the world on fire. Not setting my personal ass on fire either. All to the good.

  We got a few more Tri-motors in, Maeve was promoted to Pilot Trainer, Multi-engine, and we could afford a trace more domesticity. It was odd, considering our impetuous engagement, but we actually seemed to like each other. We were thinking of renting a little house of our own, when the shit finally hit the fan.

  >>>>>>

  It had been too good to last, and it didn’t. Waves of Gotha Bombers hit us late at night, I would have been glad to cower in the basement, but I had a job to do. Reports were jamming the radios on all frequencies. The German Atlantic Fleet had come around the Cape of Good Hope, and plowed into the Imperial Navy. Reports of massive explosions in the first locks of the recently re-opened Panama Canal, and missing ship reports from the Pacific showed that the Kaiserliche Marine had more than one string to their bows. I sent a runner to go fetch Cookie and that old woman at the litho-shop, Mrs. Atkinson, and we needed more Russian speakers. We had picked up a few people that had some Chinese, and Ken Inahara showed up un-summoned to handle the Japanese. All hands on deck. If it didn’t get blown out from under us.

  A few smaller bombs hit the Airfield, but it was the docks that took the pasting. Sounded like Eppi would have a few more salvage jobs on his list in the morning.

  I managed to get through to Isis in Jiu-quan, she reported heavy bombing and perhaps troop movements in the west. Irkutsk was quiet, not even any bombing. “The big Right Hook.” I sent to Ray Reynolds. He teletyped back one word. “Correct.”

  A few minutes later he sent, “Tell Maeve to get ready to fly at dawn.”

  “Yes, sir.” The last thing I wanted to hear, but that’s the war biz. I looked over to see her, she was coming down the stairs in her flight suit, duffle in hand. I didn’t say anything stupid. All I said was, “I love you. Be careful.”

  “I don’t know if that is an option. But I will try.”

  That was when I opened my mouth, and said the single stupidest thing that had ever come out of my face. “I’m going with you.”

  “You… have a job to do.”

  I looked over at Hanson and Peaches. “Hold the fort. I’ll be back in a day or two.” They didn’t even blink.

  Over my shoulder, Maeve said, “Get dressed. Two hours to dawn. Bring guns. We might need them.”

  >>>>>>>>>

  The first hop was to Xilin Gol, that town was unrecognizable. In a few short weeks, it had become one of the largest military bases in the world, I suppose, hundreds of airplanes, thousands of tanks, all rumbling west. There was no way to get lost, we refueled and followed the dust clouds to Jiu-quan and Urum-qi. We got there just as darkness fell, only to find that the action was a couple hundred miles north west in Karamay. A couple three roads crossed there, and there was supposed to be oil and water. We had sent out a couple of brigades to build an airfield
and throw up some sort of defenses, but the Germans had attacked with trucks and infantry. They were holding, but nobody knew how. We could see on the way in, three or four different kinds of desert, each one more barren than the other. There were dunes, and gavel plains, bare rock, and salt flats that had hopes of becoming seasonal lakes. Forlorn hopes, but not my job to tell them that.

  There were scrub trees on the hills and mountains, and damn little else. Welcome to the Gobi. They had a very busy airfield, lots of pursuits, many rigged out as dive bombers, and over to the side, a few Tri-motors. They had a mess tent, and a HQ tent, and damn little else. We found the CO, got checked in, and decided to sleep in the plane for the night. Under the plane, actually. The floor is too slanted when the plane is on the ground to sleep, except in the seats, but our butts had had enough of those seats already for one day.

  >>>>>>>

  We got a few hours, then motorized troops hit us at one in the morning. Big lorries full of troops with Spandau machine guns on the cabs. They were unarmored, but there were lots of them. A line of 7.96 mms stitched down the length of the Tri-motor above us, one lucky hit started a fire, and we decided to decamp. Or run for our lives, whichever came first. Barefoot, half naked, but with rifles and cartridge belts. First things first.

  All the lights were out except for the spotlights on the attacking trucks, and narrow blue beams from their headlights, but we knew where the HQ slit trenches were, simple survival skills. We made it, and didn’t get shot by the doughs in the trenches. Two miracles. As soon as our feet hit the bottom of the trench, we were blasting back at the Krauts. There was a sandbagged .50 a few feet from us, a reassuring bunkmate. Noisy, but I’ll take it.

  The light from the plane let us target the attackers, and after a few tracer rounds hit gas tanks, there was plenty more light. Enough light to see that the attackers were not Germans in uniforms, they were some sort of tribal assholes in pajama-looking things. Fuck them. They were brave, but not disciplined at all. We mowed them down, made them hit the ground for long enough for the Cavalry to get the tanks cranked up, then it was all over but the crunching. Still a long, bloody night.